Granger, having watched them out of sight, turned to Spurling with a sigh of relief. "Thank G.o.d, they've gone," he said.

Then he noticed that his companion was deadly pale. "What's the matter now," he asked; "are you so badly cut up at parting with such dear friends?"

"Did you hear what he said?" gasped Spurling, pushing his face nearer, and staring Granger squarely between the eyes. "Did you hear what he said? 'You say the man is dead, and you've shown me his grave, and yet. . . .' And yet what? Can you guess how that sentence was going to end?"

Granger was bewildered by his ferocious earnestness. He could not imagine its purpose, or what had caused it. "Why, of course I heard what he said," he replied. "I suppose Antoine's been trying to persuade the factor that I am dead, and he's loath to believe it."

"If that is what he meant all the better for us, but I doubt it."

But why he doubted it Granger could not get him to confess; so, turning his mind to other thoughts, like a sensible man, he set about launching the canoe, preparatory to the return to Murder Point. The last sight they saw as they paddled away, was the four gray huskies, which Spurling had brought with him on his first arrival, seated on their haunches in a row by the water's edge, raising their dismal voices to the sky. "Looks as though those d.a.m.ned beasts were doing their best to call Pilgrim back," said Spurling.

On the way to the Point they talked matters over, and determined that, since they had no time to waste, they would stop at the store only so long as was necessary for the getting together of an outfit, and would depart for the Forbidden River that night. Eyelids and Beorn were to be left in charge at Murder Point, which would serve to flatter at least one of them, and would keep them occupied. If they should demand an explanation for this sudden going away, the answer was obvious, that Granger did not choose to be arrested by the factor of G.o.d's Voice. There was only one embarra.s.sment which stood in their way, which was that in Granger's absence the boat would probably arrive from Garnier, Parwin and Wrath, bringing articles of trade in exchange for his year's collection of furs, letters of instructions from the partners for the future conduct of their interests, and expecting to carry back to Winnipeg his annual statement of accounts. He made up his mind to meet this difficulty by ordering Peggy to tell the partners that he was dead. Such a report, he calculated, were it believed and properly circulated, would help him greatly in his escape from Keewatin, when he had gathered his gold on the Forbidden River and was ready to go out. This course of action had been suggested to him by the unfinished sentence of Robert Pilgrim, which they had overheard.

As they drew near the Point, they were struck with the profoundness of its quiet. They themselves had experienced so great a change in their four days of absence, so much of emotional strife and perturbation, that they were somehow surprised to find it unaltered. Beorn, as usual, was sitting on the pier-head, smoking his pipe; he did not look up or recognise them. Eyelids, on the other side of the river, was setting his evening nets: he nodded to Granger from across the water, smiled and went on with his work. On entering the shack, they discovered Peggy busily engaged over the evening meal, as though they had forwarned her as to when they would arrive. Her face betrayed neither annoyance nor pleasure--she might never have visited Huskies'

Island. In the presence of so much that was commonplace, Spurling's fantastic account of what had happened to him on the Forbidden River seemed absurd and outrageous.

It took them two hours to prepare their outfit and carry it down to the canoe; they were in no hurry to set out, for so long as they were on the Last Chance they intended to travel only by night.

No one seemed to notice their doings, and even they themselves, becoming infected with the quiet of their surroundings, gradually ceased from conversing, and, except for an occasional necessary question, did their work in silence. At last, when it had grown as dark as it ever is in June time in Keewatin, signalling to one another with their eyes, they agreed that it was time to set out. Spurling having stepped down to the pier, Granger looked round for Peggy. He found her sitting in the gra.s.s a few paces behind him; she had come there so gently that he had been unaware of her nearness. Taking his place beside her, he commenced to speak to her the words which he had planned to say. She listened attentively, making no sign which would betray her state of mind. "Do you understand?" he asked her; and she for answer bowed her head.

Thinking that she was indifferent as to what became of him, he rose to his feet, saying in a hard voice, "Good-bye. I must be going. Thank you for what you did for me on the island!" He had turned his back and descended the mound a few paces, when he felt her clinging to his hand, pressing it against her cheek, and he knew that she was crying.

"Why, what's the matter?" he asked, bending down to her.

"Don't go, don't go," she whispered.

"Why not, Peggy? I've not been of much use to you. I don't think you'll miss me."

"I hate that man," she panted.

"But why?"

"Because he's taking you away from me; and, though you may return from this journey, there will come a day when you will not return and I shall be left alone."

Granger was surprised at her display of pa.s.sion--she had seemed to him so cold. He had come to think of her as only a squaw-wife: but it was the white woman in her who had spoken those words. He tried to comfort her, denying her doubts and talking to her as though she had been a frightened child. But throughout all that he said she kept on whispering, "He is taking you away from me. One day he will see to it that you do not return."

And had Granger stopped to think, he would have known that what she said was true; for, when once his dream of El Dorado had become capable of accomplishment, she would be to him as nothing. He heard Spurling calling him by name. Lifting her to her feet, he kissed her upon the mouth, and, amazed at his own kindness, as though he had done something shameful, ran down the mound, stepped into the canoe, and launched out.

Bending forward to Spurling, who was sitting in the bows, "It's El Dorado or death this time," he whispered. Spurling did not answer him, but he saw him crouch his shoulders as if to avoid a lash, and heard his mutter, like the echo of his own voice, "_Or death_."

The canoe was travelling heavily, for Spurling had stopped paddling.

Granger was about to expostulate with him when, watching him more attentively, he discovered that his eyes were fixed upon the bend. As they drew nearer, and were pa.s.sing by, his body trembled and he buried his face in his hands. Not until the bend was behind him did he take up his paddle--and then he flung himself into the work with frenzy, as one who fled.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FORBIDDEN RIVER

"If we are to get back before the winter closes in upon us we must start to-night."

Spurling looked up from the pan of dirt which he was washing. "You've said that ten times a day in the last two weeks if you've said it once," he snapped.

"Yes, but I mean it this time. We've got all the gold that we can carry. If you won't come with me, I shall take the canoe and start back by myself."

"Oh, you will, will you? And d'you think that I don't see through your game?" Then noticing how Granger's hand had gone instinctively to his hip-pocket, he added, "And if it comes to fighting, I go armed myself."

In a flash both men had whipped out their revolvers, but Spurling was the fraction of a second late; Granger had him covered.

"So you're going to murder me, after all," Spurling continued sneeringly. "You've postponed it a long time; it was at Drunkman's Shallows that you were going to do it first. Your excuse then was that you weren't John Granger, but your baser self. You were always a good hand at excuses. And pray who are you now?"

"Throw away that revolver," shouted Granger, in a voice that was thick with anger.

Spurling tossed it a couple of yards away.

"No, that won't do. Throw it into the river. Don't rise to your feet; crawl to it on your hands and knees."

Spurling looked at him surlily to see whether he dared disobey, then did as he was commanded. There was a flash of silver as the weapon spun through the air, a commotion of spray, as though a fish had risen, and a distant and more distant shining as it sank down and settled on the river-bed.

"That's right. Now let me tell you, Druce Spurling, that you're a fool for your pains. If either you or I are to be alive this time next year, however we may feel towards one another at present, we've got to act as though we were friends. There'll be time enough for quarrelling when we've seen the last of Murder Point, and have pa.s.sed out over the winter trail with our gold, and know that we are safe. Why, you fool, we've been here nearly four months and we've already got more gold than we can take with us; it's October, and the river may close up almost any day."

Spurling began to mutter something about how, if it weren't for Granger, _he'd_ be able to get out all right.

"What's that you're saying?" Granger interrupted him. "I've heard that tale ever since we set out and I'm sick of hearing it. You fancy that the Mounted Police think that you are dead, and have ceased to search for you, and that I'm the man they're after now. You say that I'm known in the district, and that you are unknown, except by that half-breed who caught sight of you as you went by G.o.d's Voice; therefore you argue that I am a danger, a hindrance to you. You'd like to get rid of me, so that you may get out with the gold, in safety, by yourself. It's the same old trick that you tried to play me in the Klondike; you want to reach El Dorado without me. You swine! Do you know why it is that the Mounted Police are after me? It's because I took pity on you, remembering old times, and tried to prevent your being hanged--that's why. And you make it an excuse for deserting me.

I've not told you that before, and I can see that you don't believe me now. Well, I'm not going to give you the details which would prove it--I'm not asking for grat.i.tude from such a cur as you've turned out.

All I'm going to say is this: from the first of your coming up here I've tried to play fair by you; I've done more than that, I've come near giving you my life--giving, mind you, not letting you take it as you've been inclined to do many times. And I'm willing to play fair until the end--until we get outside and are safe; then we can each go on our separate ways, if we so decide. I know where I'm going--to El Dorado. I daresay you're going to try to get there too, but that is none of my concern. I'm concerned with the present. That canoe is mine, and what's left of the grub is mine. The gold we share between us. If you don't want to come with me I'll take the canoe and other things which belong to me, and my share of the dust and nuggets, and you can stay here. But if you come with me, you've got to be honourable and behave like a man--not a husky. I give you two minutes to make your choice."

"There isn't any choice to be made," growled Spurling; "you offer me your company or starvation. I choose your company, much as I detest it. And I'd like to know who you are to speak to me like this? And what there is to lose your temper about? If you'd explained what you'd wanted, I'd have come quietly; but I'd rather cut my throat at once and be done with it than be ordered about by a man like you--a fellow married to a squaw-wife."

Granger's face went white and his lips trembled; his finger closed upon the trigger, then with an effort he controlled himself. "I think I've heard enough from you on that point," he said; "suppose we drop this discussion and get the canoe ready?"

He turned upon his heel and walked into the hut, followed more slowly by Spurling.

This was by no means their first falling out in the past four months; from the night that they left Murder Point things had been going from bad to worse. Given two men who set out into the forest together, bound by the strongest ties of friendship, who travel in one another's footsteps and sleep side by side for days and nights at a stretch, without seeing any other face but one another's and their own reflected visage, with nothing to break the silence but their own voices, and the cries of the wilderness, which have become irritatingly monotonous because of their sameness and frequent reiteration, and it is a thing to be marvelled at if they do not come back enemies. But when they set out each with his own hidden secret, each with his own private suspicion of his companion, with a gnawing enmity between them which has been changed into a show of friendship only by force of circ.u.mstance, when the object of their journey is a possession over which they have quarrelled before and parted company, concerning which they are already secretly jealous, then the final relationship of those two men can be forecast without any fear of error.

Before they had reached the Forbidden River they had ceased to converse. By the time that they had landed at the hut, their nerves were jangled. Before they had been working there many days they had thought their way over all their old grievances, and, like petulant children, were on the lookout for any new cause of offence. The cause had come when Spurling, tired with rocking the cradle, his face and hands swollen by the sun and mosquito-bitten, had said, "I don't see why we should take all this trouble. I'm going to quit work."

Granger was attending to the flume which they had constructed. "You're going to do no such thing," he had said.

"Yes, I am; you're not my master and I shan't ask your permission.

There's as much gold as we shall require in those two sacks which the Man with the Dead Soul washed out. If you've got such a scrupulous conscience, you can dig out your share; but I'm not going to help you."

"So you've turned thief now, in addition to your other profession,"

was the retort which Granger had thrown back.

Out of such small foolishnesses had arisen quarrel after quarrel, so that it had become only necessary for Spurling to make a statement for Granger to contradict him, or for Granger to express a desire for Spurling to thwart its accomplishment. Day by day they would toil together, digging out the muck, emptying it into the sluice-boxes or testing it in the pan, without exchanging a word; then some trifling difficulty would arise, for which, perhaps, neither of them was responsible, and they would seize the opportunity to goad one another on to murder with the evil of what they said. On one point only were they agreed--the gathering of the most wealth in the shortest time; for wealth meant to them escape and the preserving of their lives. To this end they feverishly laboured both day and night, reserving no special hours for sleep and rest. Yet, even in their escape, as has been seen, they did not necessarily include one another; so far as Spurling was concerned, when once the gold had been acquired, it was "each man for himself." There was no loyalty between them; they were kept together only by a common avarice, and by fear of the wideness of the Northland.